This patent application relates generally to poultry processing, such as chickens and turkeys. More specifically, the present application relates to a poultry paw cutter and related methods for cutting and unloading poultry paws.
A particular concern of the poultry processing industry is to prevent poultry products from a condemned bird from being entered into the saleable product stream. In the poultry paw cutting sector, this concern is even higher due to current inconsistent and random control processes of the poultry paws during the unloading and cutting process. Due to these known control problems, processes are utilized to throw away several sets of poultry paws for each condemned bird. Specifically, the industry must discard the paw set from the actual condemned bird, as well as process inaccuracies dictating the number of neighboring paw sets on each side of the conveying line, to compensate for the high margin of error.
As a result, there is a need in the poultry industry to more precisely and efficiently remove and cut a poultry paw from a live bird paw shackle. Additionally or alternatively, there is a need to accurately control the location of each individual poultry paw and set of poultry paws through the removal and cutting processes.